Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

Not at all. It’s good that law enforcement have the tools to deal with serious threats. You’re just throwing around a fear word.

The big guns are hidden from sight anyway, and only brought out when need be. We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

If they can be summoned by just placing an anonymous phone call with an unverified claim, that might be a problem though.

> We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average. This is far worse than a singular big attack. And how long would the reaction of police to any big attack even take? Is it actually realistic that they will have a useful impact with big guns?

>USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average.

2+ victims is a mass shooting per the FBI definition so while what you say is technically true it's also a particularly evil way to mislead the reader as the typical mass shooting of the FBI definition consists of 2-4 people shot over the course of an otherwise normal crime wheres the colloquial definition of "mass shooting" is more along the lines of a crazy suicidal person killing as many others as they can.

Mass shootings as defined to inflate statistics by groups like the Gun Violence Archive aren’t what people usually think of when they think of mass shootings. Those figures include anything with four victims including gang violence, robberies, etc. The more accurate measure is from the Mother Jones database, which lists just two this year.

> We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

Well homegrown attacks happen DAILY. "Averaging almost 50,000 deaths from firearms annually". But no, once they're not on the news like the Oct 7th attacks where, it's fine I guess.

https://www.statista.com/topics/10904/gun-violence-in-the-un...

The number you’re citing is much higher than the number of firearm-related homicides on your linked page; I believe that’s because it includes suicides, which are not relevant to this conversation.

2023 which was the peak had homocides at 14,244.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/249803/number-of-homicid...

This. There are valid reasons to have the big guns, though I still think we’ve overreached. It is terrifying that a damn teenager managed to trick the cops into whipping out the big guns hundreds of times.

Despite that the teenager will likely be going to jail, the most damning indictment is of the police forces that were repeatedly co-opted by the teenager. It should really take something much more clever to trigger this kind of systemic response repeatedly.

The USA is the only first-world country I'm aware of where many people are happy to argue that a 2+ victim shooting (in any context) is NOT a mass shooting.

What's the alternative? Waiting for New York Times to verify a home invasion has indeed taken place before sending over cops?

"2" being a large number of people to be killed in a crime does not necessarily make it sensible (to me, a Dutchman, very much not American) to call that crime a "mass shooting". If the crime was e.g. a bank robbery (sorry for the unimaginative example), and they shot a member of staff and later a civilian to get away, then that's a robbery with two dead, not a mass shooting. What people imagine when you say "mass shooting" is sensational stories from (predominantly) the US where some mad kid takes a gun to a school and shoots around. If that kid shoots 2 people, that's a mass shooting with 2 dead.

So you want police to deal with 10k+ gun related homicides using only batons and pepper spray?

If there are guns, there is death. Frankly, if there are no guns, there's still death.

You pulling an argumentative sleight of hand here conflating your run of the mill gun violence with terrorist attacks or mass shootings isn't cool.

It doesn't matter how the police is equipped, they can't stop a guy from walking up to his neighbor and shooting him in the face unless they're already there pointing guns at him. Although, maybe some sort of remote mind control chip is the answer there?

Also, I'm certain every shooting ends up on local news.

Maybe just sending out a single squad car first to get a credible assessment?

I'm not sure who aided in constructing this mental representation for you that the number of cops is directly proportional with the scale of conflict that's about to happen.

I'd challenge that view by claiming that if the threat is of someone holding their family hostage threatening to kill them (just a guess at what these "swatters" might say to the dispatcher to get cops to actually kick in some doors, I don't know what their state-of-the-art accusation is), then sending one cop car, poorly equipped, sounds a bit silly for multiple reasons.

Gun control advocates will say things like:

> Mass shootings like Columbine happen every day in America.

The guy you’re replying to (and I as well) are saying that this is an intentionally misleading statement. Three people being wounded but not killed in a shootout they started is still considered on the same level as dozens of innocent children being hurt and killed. IMO that’s straight up misinformation. It’s designed to illicit the strongest emotional reaction possible, while being not even technically wrong.

America has lots of problems, and guns are definitely one of them. Everyone agrees with this, we just disagree on how to fix it. Twisting words and lying is never helpful.

Or 1948-onwards-style genocides. One Palestinian child has been killed every 2 days since Oct 7th by the way.

Just to be clear, your version of the ideal response to an unverified claim of a hostage situation is to immediately escalate?

It's because they have to assume it's real. Same reason behind weather warnings. They can't know for sure if it's real, but it's 'better' to assume it's real and respond accordingly only to discover it's a hoax, than it is to assume it's a prank and show up unprepared only to have it be real and they aren't ready to handle it. It's Schrodinger's hostage.